What’s RescueTime?

RescueTime is a time management &amp; Productivity software company founded in 2008. The RescueTime app runs in the background of your devices categorizing your own activity, measuring and tracking.

RescueTime is a free app with a premium update That enables attributes and more reporting like moment input that is offline . It delivers a reporting dash with your data diced, sliced and sorted into charts that are useful to assist you manage your time.

RescueTime requires time’s monitoring So that you truly track your time so that and makes it automatic and painless .

That said, there are dozens and dozens of Productivity &amp; time management programs on the Internet. What are the pros &amp; cons of RescueTime? Here’s what I have noticed over time.

Disclosure — I get referral fees Mentioned on this website. Any data or opinions are based on my expertise as adviser to a paying client or a paying customer. Rescuetime Open Source

Rescuing Your Time

To reiterate, RescumeTime is a productivity tool in the Feel that it helps your skills enhance. It gathers data about the apps and websites you use, then creates reports based on that information.

You set up a and create an account to Begin Desktop app in your own computer(s) and optionally a mobile program on Android apparatus ) There is no iOS app because the operating system prevents RescueTime from collecting the data it needs to carry out its purpose. Those apps quietly and invisibly monitor which programs you use and which websites you visit, in addition to the amount of time you spend on them.

The tough nut to crack is how to make sense of all that information. To get the best results, you have to customize your account from the RescueTime website and inform the program more about what you consider productive versus unproductive activity. The further you fine-tune it to your specific circumstances, the better your results. For instance, somebody who works in the finances industry may classify reading financial news on web sites including MarketWatch and FT.com as a productivity task, whereas for me, that is an unproductive use of time.

You can categorize every program and website on a 5-point Scale of very productive, productive, impartial, dependable, and very unproductive. You could even categorize action into work categorizes. For example, I record Google Docs as quite productive, and that I categorized it as Writing, which will be a subcategory of Layout and Composition. Looking at Redfin.com is quite distracting when I’m trying to function, and I have categorized it as such.

From the desktop program, there is an easy set of controllers That lets you pause RescueTime for a quarter hour, one hour, or till tomorrow, providing you easy access to shifting the program off for days or breaks once you wrap up early.

Privacy

When faced with RescueTime’s proposal –We’ll monitor Everything you do and provide you insights about your customs! –some individuals might, justifiably, be worried about their privacy and the safety of information on their hardware. Should you use sensitive info online or keep sensitive information in your own computers and mobile devices, you’ll want to browse RescueTime’s privacy and security statements carefully.

For everybody else, RescueTime’s privacy policy Includes a summary at the very top, only a couple of stiff lines which are worth studying.

If your worries are more relaxed and You Just Don’t Want RescueTime monitoring you on the weekend, so you have control over the days and times the program monitors your behavior. You can easily set it to only watch your activity from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or whatever program suits you.

Reports

I’ve used RescueTime for decades, and I don’t check my Every day productivity reports. I like to allow the service run in the background so that when I do want to find a better picture of how I have been spending my own time, a fantastic quantity of information is waiting for me.

When I do go through the reports, however, they are Magnificent. I love the variety, providing you get numerous ways of understanding your productivity and customs, from bar charts and pie graphs that show lump amounts of activity, to line items of software you employed.

One simple but powerful piece of advice RescueTime Provides is an analysis of when during the daytime you tend to be the most successful. I was not surprised to observe that my mind peaks in the morning and slacks off after 2:00 p.m., as that matches pretty well with everything I know about my customs. If you have never studied your productivity, nevertheless, that might be a useful revelation for you, one that may help you schedule your days more .

The more time you use RescueTime Premium, the more useful the Data becomes, because you can see your statistics by day, week, month, or year. And as you might expect, you can toggle that days and times RescueTime records your action so it turns off automatically on weekends, for instance. Rescuetime Open Source

Additional Features

Much of the value you get from RescueTime comes in what You make of this information and how you use that information to affect your own behavior. Changing behavior is tough, but getting rich insights doesn’t have to be.

One of the ways RescueTime makes it Simple to understand how To interpret all the data it collects is with a Productivity Pulse score. This daily evaluation, shown as a percent, comes in calculating the percentage of time spent on very productive, effective, neutral, unproductive, and incredibly unproductive tasks. To be clear, no one is advocating you aim for a 100 percent Productivity Pulse score.

A RescueTime blog article describing the productivity Score notes that the average score is 67 percent, and the average is 79 percent. The majority of people want to do some work that is not considered”very productive” throughout their day. The whole point of using RescueTime will be to help you work out how to concentrate on productive and incredibly productive tasks when you will need to and perhaps save less productive activities for times as soon as your ability to concentrate was waning anyway.

Tasks are not the Exact Same thing as distractions. RescueTime has a simple and smart attribute for controlling behaviour that is unwanted, like getting sucked into sites that are distracting , also. A feature called FocusTime, when empowered, blocks your ability to access. It personalization and requires a little setting up, but it is quite powerful once it’s ready to deploy. As an example, let us say you wish to to finish a report, and also to make progress on it, you need to focus hardcore for the next thirty minutes. Switch on FocusTime, and it can prevent you from looking posting on Twitter, checking sports scores, or whatever other sites and activities you deem distracting.

The RescueTime mobile app has a setting which will Automatically silence your phone you enable FocusTime. Likewise, you can set up other automation with the help of third-party services IFTTTFree at iTunes Store and Zapier to obstruct or silence other distractions. By way of example, you can create a rule with IFTTT (it stands for”if this, then that”) that states,”If I empower FocusTime, then mechanically set my Slack status to active.”

RescueTime also Provides you the Choice Idle moment. Whenever RescueTime finds that the computer was idle for many minutes in a row, it pops up a dialog asking if you’re at a meeting, on the phone, taking break, and so on, and permits you to classify the idle time accordingly.

Advantages of RescueTime

Here’s some of the advantages of utilizing RescueTime Over other solutions. Rescuetime Open Source

Feature Set

At its heart, RescueTime does something — monitor time. It’s not unique When you look at it that way. Technically, you can do this using a spreadsheet or any of the dozens of free apps online.

However, RescueTime’s attribute set The way that it tracks time and what it does with the data (aka, one you’ll actually use).

RescueTime watches that windows now have Action, looks at times, and the window title the action in that window. It is always running in the background watching.

Unobtrustive makes RescueTime worthwhile. There is not any friction or barrier to monitoring time.

Since RescueTime’s monitoring feature solves that Problem, you’ll have data that is complete, useful & appropriate.

RescueTime’s other features focus on making their Core feature. Like time-tracking &amp; charging for 15, they don’t try to include. They don’t try to get into any side companies.

They do have Attribute in an interesting way. For example, the Get Focused! Feature blocks apps when selected from running.

They have aims and alerts that allow you to pick What you want to happen when X occurs — and RescueTime will do that based on which it’s monitoring.

I love RescueTime does Offline Time Tracking. Instead of having to search and put in it 100% manually, then you pick a time period that is unlogged and fill in the blank.

You can customize the buttons to make logging Offline time simple and quick.

It is a minimalist feature but that’s exactly What makes it great. It is well-done, straightforward and easy.

Pricing and Strategies

RescueTime provides two tiers of support: Lite (free) and Premium ($9 a month or $72 per year). Organizations or Firms that are looking to use RescueTime across a bunch of people pay the exact same rate as Premium subscribers.

RescueTime Lite offers lots for someone who has never Tracked her or his period before. The program monitors which websites and programs you use, and how long spent in or on every one of them. You may categorize each app and website you use on a Productive/Unproductive scale, and RescueTime creates a couple of basic reports showing how you spend your time. Lite members can set weekly goals, such as”spend X hours per week on productive jobs and fewer than Y moments on unproductive products.” You can get a report email. For reports, you are limited to some history, however.

Subscribers get everything from the Lite program that is free, Plus features and reports, including an unlimited history. Premium comes with alarms you can empower for when you reach goals. You can more correctly log time spent away from the computer, noting if you’re in a meeting, on a telephone call, or just out to lunch. There is a Get Focused option, which permits you to block distracting websites you set. Rescuetime Open Source

Assessing RescueTime’s cost to that of other programs Requires an open mind as apps do exactly what RescueTime does. Qbserve is one of the programs you may find, and it costs a flat one-time fee of $40.

We could, however, look at more traditional time-tracking Programs for freelancers that contain tools for generating bills. HarvestFree in Harvest is an adequate example. At $12 per person per month for Premium, it costs more than RescueTime, but it has a very clear return on investment because it helps ensure more accurate billing. How you will translate RescueTime’s reports and make better use of your time as a consequence is much less clear.

Toggl, another traditional time-tracking program that is Popular among freelancers, costs $9 a month, and it gives you tools for monitoring time spent on jobs with billing clients’ typical end goal. It has integration options for linking with invoicing services, although toggl doesn’t include its own invoicing tools.

A few programs are closer to RescueTime in what they have to Offer, for example Slife, even though they tend to have fewer features even if they’re free (and Slife is).

Either way — RescueTime is a no-brainer pricing-wise. It’s totally free to use.

And if you are saved by the reporting/advanced attributes just 1 hour per month then it is paid for itself even if you are only earning US minimum wage.

RescueTime is.

App Quality

A common problem with monitoring programs of all types is That they always must be on. The”always on” feature can lead to performance problems on notebooks &amp; desktop computers. Battery problems can be caused by it .

But in my experience, RescueTime causes neither. It is running on my Windows PC, my Macbook Pro, and my Nexus 5x mobile phone from startup. I’ve never tracked any functionality or battery issues.

It’s well-built and lightweight.

I like the fact that the cellular app doesn’t demand Heaps of absurd permissions. It demands access to use data, but doesn’t attempt to monitor emails, contacts, location, or some of the typical privacy violating other programs that are permissions ask for.

It is quick to set up and syncs using an internet dashboard. It crunches the information quickly if you’re on the Premium program or by next day on the program that is free, and pulls at precisely the time.

Reporting

What is the purpose of data if you can not interpret it ? Rescuetime Open Source

RescueTime’s reports solves this problem — and in Lots of ways is the entire point of working with the app.

RescueTime’s Dashboard uses colorful bar and Pie charts to show just what you are (and aren’t ) doing.

You can Choose to receive reports every day, Week or month.

And on Top of That, you can dig deep into the Reporting with filters and overlays to find your habits out.

It to see the amount of Time that each task happens.

When I trying to find a marketing agency in Atlanta — The time monitored to Instant Messages and Gchats was astounding. It changed my job supervisors , but also processes not only for me.

Now I’m on my own — I can see the exact time that I devote to tasks that matter. I am able to construct my entire day around those.

And Simply to reiterate — all of the reports are Built-in into the software. The Dashboard is really on my default — and advanced reports are pre-built.

It’s all effective, seamless and quick so that you Are wasting time when assessing your time.

Integrations

Among the key selling points of RescueTime is their feature set minimalism. They do one thing and they do it nicely.

That said all people using their product Have applications needs that are time-based. When it’s charging, project management, team time tracking or anything your time needs do not stop with categorization, measuring and monitoring.

To resolve that problem, RescueTime’s software Integrates with a range. They’ve an API and direct integrations with shared software.

Whether you are Time monitoring into invoicing software like FreshBooks or a job manager that needs to collate staff member’s time, RescueTime will probably integrate with this.

Disadvantages of RescueTime

Like any software however — RescueTime is Nor is it the best fit for everyone. Here’s some disadvantages that I’ve noticed through time. Rescuetime Open Source

Default Get Focused! Groups

Generally, RescueTime’s categories good. Websites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter are”Very Distracting”…for many people. And for general tracking, RescueTime’s categories are fast &amp; simple to repair.

However, RescueTime’s categories News, sites and research websites’ subdomains.

I can not use the Get Focused! Functionality for almost any Task which requires research (aka visiting a bunch of different websites).

The time that I need smart obstructing Functionality is when I’m doing research for a post

There’s a fine line between which really is productive and When I’m researching, this is distracting. It’d be good to use RescueTime, but the categories are not accurate enough for this to work.

The Main problem is the Block Sites work Is not available in reverse (ie, add specific sites to block). I am only able to add websites to unblock.

And if I’m visiting several dozen blocked websites — Adding them becomes time wasting.

If You’re Looking for an app that will block only Specific sites — RescueTime isn’t it.

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

If you do the wrong thing for 18 hours Every Day, Daily with focus that is perfect — you are doing the incorrect thing.

The most important factor in time direction is to Work on the things that are right — the 20% of time input which will generate 80% of your outcomes.

And that is a element that’s 100% on you personally. RescueTime Can not fix that problem.

In fact, in some ways, RescueTime can hurt your By pushing you towards improved efficient doing over planning, research and approach Attempts.

If effectiveness is your core issue, then RescueTime is not for you. It’ll only make things worse.

Instead, I’d recommend reading a few of them books.

Conclusion

RescueTime continues to be an invaluable tool for me. It’s not for everyone and has some feature quirks and disadvantages.

That said, the thing it’s provided is perspective. It’s easy to believe you”work a ton” or are”not addicted to a telephone” or”spend as much time composing” or are”hardly ever on Facebook.”

However, the data doesn’t lie. And using RescueTime to Get accurate time data onto your time can help your own time is literally rescued by you and place your own life in perspective. Rescuetime Open Source